There's big money behind the attack on the homeless squatters
Excellent research here from Steve Rushton

Who is sponsoring Mike Freer’s vendetta on squatting?
http://occupynewsnetwork.co.uk/?p=6406

Mike Freer is the MP at the centre of ‘Daftgate’. Squatters invited him to engage in a meeting. Afterwards, he unwittingly hit return and sent a message about what he thought of the invitation – he sent this back to the squatters. It was meant for a Conservative colleague.

This email, starts with with response to the request to engage in a democratic discussion. “Err no.” The email went on to call the squatters “numb-nuts”, and the police’s actions “daft”.
This disrespect for the democratic process deepens further, when you consider his campaign funding and vendetta against squatting. Along with Mike Weatherley, he has pushed for it to be a criminal offence to recycle an empty residential property.
Search the Money – a research tool to see who is funding the Conservatives – shows Mike Freer has accepted money thousands of pounds from four property developers and investors in housing.
Excelsior Properties donated £25,000 to Mr Freer, they are luxury apartment developers based in Finchley (North London). They are owned by Mr Neel Harshad Khiroya,
Lakeside Developments Ltd donated £5,000, they are an estate agent based in Clerkenwell, (Central London) Business listings
They co directors are David and Barbara Glass.
Brookstream Properties Limited donated £10,000.00, they are estate agents based in the Harrow, West London. Their owners are listed as Grosvenor Financial Nominees Limited, and Luke and Brian Comer. The two brothers were rated 11th in their native Ireland’s rich list, for their international multi-million dollar property empire worth over €375 million.
Sun Mark Ltd donated £1,962.13. This company based in Greenford, West London.Their chairman, Dr. Rami Ranger MBE business interests include property development, and is ranked 785th on the UK rich list (2012).
In Britain, it is estimated by the Empty Homes Agency that there is 1,290,000 empty dwelling or unused commercial properties with potential to become a home.
Empty properties serve as assets for the financial elites, and benefits landlords and property developers. The reduction in supply pushes house and rent prices higher – this explains why they want to criminalise squatting.
In contrast, keeping properties empty worsens Britain’s housing crisis, also the increased cost of houses deepens social inequality and worsens poverty.
While the new squatting laws – making it a crime to squat in empty residential building is expected to kill more people this winter. In February, Daniel Gauntlett was the first person known to die directly from Section 144.
This pattern of political donation – some may call bribes – is repeated by the other key MP attempting to criminalise squatting Mike Weatherley.

­­­­-

Mike Weatherley

Parliamentary records show that Mr Weatherley has been supported by political donations from the following property tycoons, investor and multi-millionaires: -

Ray Bloom: £1,797.07 and

Stewart Newton: £12,000 and

Sir Tim Sainsbury: £2,500.

Mr Weatherley, was also given money prior to winning his election in Hove that is detailed by the research resource search the money. This details how he has received over £150,000 in political donations including from property investors Hambrook Estate Limited, as well as the property investors the Lewis Trust Group Ltd: £2,000, Elitist United and Cecil Club and Winston Churchill Dining Clubs and Millionaire property trader Mike Holland and developer John D Regan.

This cash has meant that Mike Weatherley has combined with landlord lobbyists to campaign for anti-squatting laws. These two people and their organisations: show what the cause Weatherley is being paid to stand up for.

Winter is a difficult time for the UK's homeless population (Report, 29 November). We are concerned at both the effect of existing legislation, which has made squatting in residential properties a criminal offence, and the proposals being made by some within the government to extend the law to encompass commercial properties. We fear that any further criminalisation which removes the option of seeking shelter in abandoned and unused commercial property would have disastrous consequences. We wish to remind the government of the tragic death of one homeless person already this year. Daniel Gauntlett died from exposure after police prevented him from entering a derelict house. At the very least, a thorough impact assessment should be undertaken in conjunction with homeless charities before any further legislation is even considered.

There are record numbers of people in temporary accommodation. Street homeless figures have skyrocketed in recent months and the full extent of the bedroom tax and welfare cuts are yet to be felt. Austerity measures have slashed vital funding to homeless services, which are already operating at full stretch. Removing the option of squatting in abandoned commercial spaces would be a further blow to an already marginalised and at-risk segment of society. As the weather worsens, the risks street homeless people face are greater. The government must take the very real link between squatting and homelessness into consideration.

20,000% mark up!
Tip my hat to you Andrew for the original thoughts here

Quote:

Housing: Essentials of life are costing more than ever
As Britain hits the top of the league this month, proudly beating Germany by importing more Ferrari sports cars than any other country, millions of unemployed have already lost in the clamor for low paid jobs. Many disabled and infirm too will never earn a living and the British government is forgetting at its peril that these people are human beings who deserve the minimum: food, warmth and shelter.

As these basic needs are withdrawn the obsession with ‘equality’ in gender, race and sexuality consistently ignores the chasm that has opened up of income inequality. Having taken the food from over half a million mouths and made it impossible for people to heat their homes the Cameron government now threatens them with homelessness too and it's here that his cruelty hits his economic ineptitude head on.

Given that Britain has been forced by the EU to open its doors to foreign labor we are seeing around 200,000 economic migrants a year, Britain's biggest wave of immigration ever. Anyone who questions the wisdom of this is simply branded ‘racist’. Along with the rich buying up houses as an investment, and a virtual halt in construction of affordable housing this is elevating the cost of British accommodation to dizzying heights.

Though it looks good to some on paper, Britain’s housing bubble results from a housing oligopoly controlled by just a handful of massive firms of whom Barratt, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon, Berkeley, Bellway, Redrow, Galliford Try, Bovis, Crest Nicholson are the biggest. With an oligopoly on place you can be sure buying a house bears no relation whatsoever to the cost of building one.

The average three bedroom council house has two main ingredients in cost: materials, and labor. A rough estimate of the bricks, wood, tiles, plasterboard, windows, doors and other fittings that go into a house is 7,500 pounds and taking man hours of labor at 10 pounds an hour brings that up to a build cost of 15,000 pounds. Spread over the lifetime of a house of 200 years, this works out at around 2 pounds a week.

The difference between this and the average actual weekly rent or mortgage repayment for a two bedroom house in Southern England is 400 pounds, a profit margin of 20,000 percent. The house-building oligopoly and lazy ‘rentier’ classes are extorting almost the entire rent every week from the poor. From these figures it seems the entire UK economy is now based on nothing but the threat of eviction. So perhaps this is why Cameron has criminalized the squatting of residential properties in Britain, which has been a legal guarantee since the dawn of time.

Just this week we have seen what happens to people who, faced with trying to pay for housing which has been inflated 20,000 percent above the cost, try to buy land and do it themselves. Matthew Lepley and Jules Smith bought twenty acres of land in Beaworthy, Devon and have built a simple but beautiful eco-home on it, but now face an order from the local Torridge District Council to tear it all down.

Perhaps the government is worried that if the word gets about it would deflate their precious housing bubble? Thankfully there are many more who have built in secret and do not intend to reveal to the authorities where they are living.

BBC Radio 4 - Housing: Where Will We All Live?
It's been identified as the single biggest threat to the British economy: we are simply not building enough homes. In this debate recorded at the London School of Economics and Political Science, BBC Social Affairs Editor Mark Easton and a panel of guests discuss why the problem has developed and how best to fix it. They will hear the stories of people who are both desperate for new homes and from those who oppose wanton destruction of precious areas of countryside. Producer: Lucy Ash http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046rbm7

Living in an airing cupboard is no joke but the housing crisis forced me to do it
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/11/living-airing-cup board-housing-crisis-rent
Apparently I should accept my lot as a renter while lining the pockets of the richest in society. No thanks
Holly Baxter - theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 June 2014 12.18 BST
'I was expecting to hear practical solutions to the housing crisis, and a drive to burst the bubble. Instead, excessive pandering to landlords and an insistence that my experience was anomalous seemed to dominate.' Photograph: Business Visual/Rex
Not too long ago, I did a stint living in an airing cupboard. It's a funny story, really – one that I've written about a few times to honestly describe where Vagenda, the online magazine I co-edit, started. It's memorable, it gets a giggle, and I've been asked no fewer than three times by BBC Radio 4 to go on air to describe it.
The most recent occasion was this week, when I addressed a panel led by housing experts including Richard Blakeway, London's deputy mayor for housing, land and property, Rachel Fischer, a head of policy for the National Housing Federation and Mark Easton, the BBC home affairs editor. Once again, when I stood up and told the story, people laughed.
Unfortunately, the reality of living in an airing cupboard isn't as funny as it sounds. It's a lack of windows, a complete dearth of personal privacy, a secret that you don't tell your co-workers. It's no access to electrical outlets. It's washing your tights in the bathroom sink and then drying them with a hairdryer in the hallway before work. It's curling up into the foetal position under a blanket beside the boiler, hearing it click loudly on and off every morning at 4am beside your head. It's humiliation and loneliness.
My co-editor, Rhiannon, who offered up the cupboard in question, did so out of kindness because I had just found myself a job and had nowhere to stay. All of our recently graduated friends were either bouncing from place to place as the "hidden homeless", or crammed into rented accommodation that had long had its communal areas reduced to galley kitchens. That meant no lounge, no sofa to kip on for friends in need, and certainly no spare bedrooms. I considered myself lucky to get a cupboard for the five weeks it took me to receive my first pay cheque, just enough to put down a rental deposit on a bedroom in a dilapidated shared house with strangers. That's where I continue to live.
This isn't what I consider a sob story, but a success story. My current accommodation is far superior to a large chunk of my friends'. I have my own room in a place where our landlord has maintained communal areas rather than turning them into more bedrooms. Seventy per cent of my salary goes on rent, which is normal among my peers – but I'm well aware that this situation isn't right.
As I sat at the BBC debate, which will be aired on Radio 4 on Wednesday at 8pm, I was told repeatedly by Blakeway, Boris Johnson's housing sidekick, that my problems would have been solved if businesses gave their employees loans for rental deposits in the way that they do for season tickets on trains. Of course, that would have liberated me from the airing cupboard, but it wouldn't have solved the present situation. He also suggested that shared ownership was the way forward, even though no young person I have spoken to finds that an attractive option. Fischer said I was a victim of a society that is "obsessed with home ownership", and that maybe I should accept my lot while lining the pockets of the richest in society.
The fact that such a distinguished panel were hopelessly out of touch with the reality of housing left me deflated. I was expecting to hear practical solutions to the housing crisis, and a drive to burst the bubble. Instead, excessive pandering to landlords and an insistence that my experience was anomalous seemed to dominate. But the fact remains that my experience is the norm for people my age.
The only person who did speak passionately and sensibly about the issue was the designer Wayne Hemingway. He mentioned the psychological benefits of being able to decorate your home, of being able to choose your own furnishings, of choosing the other people you live with. It was the only acknowledgement I heard all night that the statistics about my generation had human faces behind them.
Around the time I spent in the cupboard, I went to a party in an abandoned mansion that was being cleared of its squatter inhabitants. I walked along a road I never could have guessed existed, comprised of palatial property after palatial property, many of which stood empty. Then I went back to my home which had been officially declared uninhabitable months before, the one without heating or a bathroom. The panel debating housing would have it that neither those empty mansions nor the illegal flat that I lived in exist. But I know they do, because I've been there._________________www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.orgwww.rethink911.orgwww.patriotsquestion911.comwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a25

The right to housing is included in several international legally-binding documents. Among the most significant of these is the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (article 11.1), which determines that

Money that serves rather than rules should simply be a means to facilitate exchange, and there's something unwholesome about how we've become so utterly dependent on it. We all seem to have lost sight of the fact that it would be relatively simple to give every family in every land enough of the earth to live on, work on and grow some food and keep a few chickens on without having to pay anybody anything for the privilege of doing so.

But what would that do to GDP? Perhaps the quest for ever greater GDP is just killing us and the planet and it has to go, the sooner the better? In that case a crash might be the opportunity for a 'great reset'. What in the Old Testament they used to call the Jubilee? Sharing out the land again to everyone, yes everyone.
http://rt.com/op-edge/170432-west-delusions-right-forget/_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Imagine living in a country where having the freedom to cultivate your own land, tax-free and without government interference, is not only common but also encouraged for the purpose of promoting individual sovereignty and strong, healthy communities.

Now imagine that in this same country, nearly all of your neighbors also cultivate their own land as part of a vast network of decentralized, self-sustaining, independent “eco-villages” that produce more than enough food to feed the entire country.

You might be thinking this sounds like some kind of utopian interpretation of historical America, but the country actually being described here is modern-day Russia.

It turns out that Russia’s current agricultural model is one that thrives as a result of the millions of small-scale, family-owned and -operated, organically-cultivated farms that together produce the vast majority of the food consumed throughout the country.

Russia organic farm

Do Russians have more food freedom & independence than Americans?

A far cry from the unsustainable, chemical-dependent, industrialized agriculture system that dominates the American landscape today, Russia’s agricultural system, which is not technically a system at all, is run by the people and for the people. Thanks to government policies there that actually encourage autonomous family farming, rather than cater to the greed of chemical and biotechnology companies like they do here in the states, the vast majority of Russians are able and willing to grow their own food on privately-owned family plots known as “dachas.”

According to The Bovine, Russia’s Private Garden Plot Act, which was signed into law back in 2003, entitles every Russian citizen to a private plot of land, free of charge, ranging in size from 2.2 acres to 6.8 acres. Each plot can be used for growing food, or for simply vacationing or relaxing, and the government has agreed not to tax this land. And the result of this effort has been phenomenal, as Russian families collectively grow practically all the food they need.

“Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world ­ and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat,” writes Leonid Sharashkin, editor of the English version of the The Ringing Cedars series, a book collection that explains the history behind this effort to reconnect people with the earth and nature. (http://www.ringingcedars.com/)

Most food in Russia comes from backyard gardens

Back in 1999, it was estimated that 35 million small family plots throughout Russia, operated by 105 million people, or 71 percent of the Russian population, were producing about 50 percent of the nation’s milk supply, 60 percent of its meat supply, 87 percent of its berry and fruit supply, 77 percent of its vegetable supply, and an astounding 92 percent of its potato supply. The average Russian citizen, in other words, is fully empowered under this model to grow his own food, and meet the needs of his family and local community.

“Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year ­ so in the U.S., for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today; however, the area taken up by lawns in the U.S. is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens ­ and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.”

The backyard gardening model is so effective throughout Russia that total output represents more than 50 percent of the nation’s entire agricultural output. Based on 2004 figures, the collective value of all the backyard produce grown in Russia is $14 billion, or 2.3 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) – and this number only continues to increase as more and more Russians join the eco-village movement.

Britain was the first country to industrialize and used her manufacturing muscle to become the great empire in the 19th century. It wasn’t just technology, like the invention of the steam engine, but a national policy of mass urbanization, transferring labour from agriculture to armaments and industry that put Britain ahead of the world. Mass evictions of the peasantry, known as enclosures, kept the wheels turning in the factories, William Blake’s ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ were filled with hundreds of thousands of homeless men with hungry families to house and feed, desperate for money for rent and food.

The wider empire was built on one particular invention, the railway. Moving coal, iron ore, wool and other raw materials as well as manufactured goods off the canals and uphill, down dale, cheaply and at speed gave Britain the edge as a massive shipbuilding program projected Queen Victoria’s power across the globe.

In bold and intelligently written essays, historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. From Thomas Paine to the Luddites and from Karl Marx--who concluded his great study of capitalism with the enclosure of commons--to the practical dreamer William Morris who made communism into a verb and advocated communizing industry and agriculture, to the 20th-century communist historian E. P. Thompson, Linebaugh brings to life the vital commonist tradition. He traces the red thread from the great revolt of commoners in 1381 to the enclosures of Ireland, and the American commons, where European immigrants who had been expelled from their commons met the immense commons of the native peoples and the underground African American urban commons, and all the while urges the ancient spark of resistance.

On a bitterly cold night earlier this year, 35-year-old Daniel Gauntlett left his borrowed tent and sought respite from the frozen ground on the veranda of a boarded-up bungalow in the Kent village of Aylesford.

Gauntlett had been arrested just before Christmas for breaking into the same derelict house to sleep and had been charged under the new anti-squatting legislation. So the father of two lay down outside on the porch to get what sleep he could under a damp tarpaulin. As temperatures dropped, he died there of hypothermia. On the same Saturday night another homeless man, Douglas Poynton, 45, also died in Aylesford.

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The long winter's weather has taken its toll on Britain's rough sleepers, whose numbers have risen dramatically by almost a third in the past two years. Local authorities only open emergency shelters when zero temperatures are forecast for three consecutive nights. Deaths are inevitable among a group of vulnerable people whose life expectancy is 44 to 30 years lower than the national average. Between 30% and 50% suffer mental illness, many have autism or Asperger's. They are three times more likely to die from infection than the general population. They are four times more likely to die from unnatural causes.

In London, services are stretching thinner, but major charities are established in the capital, where the mayor has committed to ending rough sleeping. But smaller towns and regions are now finding themselves with burgeoning demand for beds and soup kitchens just as councils are closing services under the pressure of huge budget cuts.

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Daniel Lee Gauntlett wasn't friendless. As a boy he didn't do brilliantly at school but found a job in the scrap metal trade and then worked as a decorator. He married Kerry and had two children. He liked to do the school run when he could. His mother, brother, sister and niece live in East Malling, three miles from where he died. His life was shaken by his parents' divorce and by the death at 18 of his younger brother. Gauntlett's own health suffered and depression dogged him, which in turn caused him employment and financial problems. His marriage broke up and in 2006 Kerry and the children moved away.

Debbie Arnold, 43, who was in a relationship with Gauntlett for several years, said: "He was sensitive, very sensitive. He was a lovely soul, but very easily led." Falling in with the wrong crowd led to a short spell in prison for burglary three years ago. "No one would give him a chance after that, no one would give him a job. He didn't want to get into trouble again. He was very low and found that a lot of things were getting to him."

Gauntlett hit a downward spiral, began drinking, and the couple split up two years ago. "We never knew where he had gone," she said.

In Aylesford, Charlene and Steve Austen noticed a bearded man hanging about the village. One day, seeing him soaked, they bought him sausage and chips. Their kindness made him cry. Weeks later they saw him again. "We were in the village and found him slumped over a wall," said Charlene, 41. "Freezing cold, stuff running down his face. He was a mess."

Too weak to carry his own bags, Gauntlett was helped to come to the couple's home for a hot drink but he wouldn't stay. "He didn't want to impose," Charlene said. "People take dogs in off the street in this country, yet he's left. He was left to die outside a boarded-up bungalow."

Last year the number of people officially classed as homeless in England jumped by 14%. Rough sleeping rose by 31%. Across England, 48,510 households were accepted as homeless by local authorities, including 69,460 children. That doesn't cover people in overcrowded accommodation or "sofa-surfers". A study in Wales found the most common reason for people sleeping rough was that they had exhausted help from friends or family.

Calls to Shelter's housing advice helpline for people who are either homeless or at risk of losing their home have risen by 80% in the past three years, while 1.4 million people in Britain are falling behind with their rent or mortgage payments, according to a YouGov poll.

"People say 'What? Homelessness in leafy Chichester?" said Stuart Gibbons of the charity Stonepillow in West Sussex, "but we are all just three mortgage payments away from the situation of many of our clients." Gibbons said winter brought a sharp rise in demand. "It's not necessarily a rise in numbers, but the man who might usually sleep unnoticed in the Morrisons doorway is more likely to move and look for a bed when it gets that cold … In terms of health, infections and gangrene, asthma and chest infections are really common things. And someone with no address has no right to a GP."

Last week in Newcastle 26-year-old journalist Lee Halpin was found dead in a derelict building. Temperatures had reached -4C that weekend. He had planned to make a film about the city's rough sleepers by becoming one of them. His friends believe he died of hypothermia, but post mortem tests continue.

Another rough-sleeping hotspot is the south-west, where a recent report by Devon's director of public health, Dr Virginia Pearson, concluded: "Rough sleeping is often viewed as a problem which only exists in large cities. This report shows that there is a significant number of people homeless and rough sleeping in Devon, not just in the larger urban areas but also in the more rural and remote parts of the county." When Michael Gething, 42, died of hypothermia in a Totnes alleyway in December, the fourth homeless man to die there in two years, local people carried his coffin through the streets of a town with no shelter beds.

Duncan Shrubsole, director of policy at Crisis, said: "Homelessness is growing pretty consistently, not just in the big cities but in the smaller towns as well … From this month every source of funding, every advice service, every centre will be hit; 2,000 hostel beds have just gone. Rough sleeping is rising in these small towns that aren't even admitting they have an issue. There's still some sympathy for the homeless … but nobody likes those perceived as anti-social, even though the homeless are far more likely to be victims of abuse or violence than perpetrators. A big fear is that we lose all the professionalism we have built up in this field, since the bad old days a decade ago when it was a blanket in a church or cardboard city at Waterloo. We're now skilled at getting people back into society, at keeping people out of the prison and mental health systems."

In Aylesford last month Gauntlett's family reclaimed their son and gave him a "really lovely funeral" said Debbie Arnold. "He didn't ask for help, but he needed it. He was always there when I needed him, always happy to help, he had a heart of gold. Homeless people aren't nasty, sometimes they are just proud, like Dan was."

Homelessness Social exclusion Housing Local government
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abirch
14 Apr 2013 5:38

56
57
Sad, just sad.

Report

maggawags
14 Apr 2013 9:03

22
23
We as a country rescue animals and assess their needs... Surely in the name of humanity there should be more supervised shelter for the people such as Daniel. Many people live in the cosy comfort of their castles and many homes.

In these uncertain economic times , everyone is on rocky ground now... but...
there is a generation that has become dependent and weakened by excess.. so we all understand that
drink and drug dependency is evil and destructive..

Report
madmonty maggawags

88
89
@maggawags - In reading the article this poor mans situation was not a case of drink or drugs, but family breakdown and subsequent depression.

I suffer from depression, have all my life, in 1988 a combination of factors led me to the point of losing my home, one of which was Nigel Lawson's sudden and large increase of interest rates.

Luckily I had the support of loving parents who pulled me through it. However it has never left me how quickly your life can disintegrate through circumstances some of which were completely unexpected and out of my control.

Its is uncertain economic times granted, but we do need to push for better help for those who are homeless and those who do suffer from forms of mental illness, otherwise this will not be the last sad story.

This man was arrested under the new act, why was nothing done after that arrest to try an get him to some form of accommodation?

What kind of society are we living in, when in the 21st Century people in the UK are dying , homeless and alone, something is very wrong

Report
honeynutloop maggawags

7
8
@maggawags - I agree. But of course, whilst people will willingly open their purses to support animal charities, they seem more reluctant to pay out to support vulnerable humans.

Tom Crawford, 63, has been fighting the bailiffs in an on-going battle over claims that he owes £43,000 in outstanding mortgage repayments
Yahoo News.Yahoo News. – 22 hours ago

A cancer sufferer from Nottingham declared victory over bailiffs looking to evict him after a 500-strong crowd of strangers formed a blockade around his home - forcing them to turn back.

Tom Crawford, 63, has been fighting the bailiffs in an on-going battle over claims that he owes £43,000 in outstanding mortgage repayments.

Today - six months after the first eviction attempt which saw 300 strangers turn up to stop the bailiffs after a YouTube plea - they were again forced to abandon plans to expel him from his home of 27 years.
Mr Crawford was last week ordered to vacate his property by 10:30am today, at which point bailiffs would repossess his home.

Supporters turned up to Mr Crawford’s home in their hundreds from 7am donning the grandfather-of-two’s trademark straw hat with the words ‘I am Tom Crawford’ written across them.
Protesters prevented bailiffs from entering the street where Tom Crawford's house stands. (SWNS)
Protesters prevented bailiffs from entering the street where Tom Crawford's house stands. (SWNS)

When a white transit van and black mercedes containing bailiffs arrived at 11am, they were unable to reach the bungalow because of the crowd.

Mr Crawford - who has prostate cancer - retired from fitting carpets two years ago due to ill health.

He said: ‘I am humbled by all of the people here.

’There are not enough words in the English Dictionary for how I feel. There were about 350 people here last time and I think there may be more now.

‘All I did was make a little video about what was happening to us and people supported it, but then they came banging on my door again seven days ago.

Tom Crawford in front of his Nottingham home of 27 years (SWNS)

He and his wife Susan, 54, took out an endowment mortgage with the now defunct Bradford and Bingley to buy the bungalow for £41,800 in 1988.

He and Susan, who works in market research, paid £300-£400 in monthly mortgage repayments and expected to own the property when the mortgage came to an end in 2013.

But he claims the bank told him 2007 that he would never pay off his mortgage because there was no record of him taking out the endowment mortgage.

500 protesters who have formed a human blockade to prevent bailiffs evicting cancer sufferer Tom Crawford from …

He then says a bank manager assured him this was incorrect and even sent his wife champagne to apologise for the blunder.

But soon he was embroiled in a court battle over the mortgage, which he says the bank converted into an interest only loan without his knowledge.

Mr Crawford said he would ‘rather die’ than move from his home.

He said: ‘The bailiffs have just come along but won't show us the documents. There were huge guys inside the vans and we don't get people like that round here.’

The group of strangers who came to help Tom Crawford who appealed on youtube in July 2014 after being threatened …_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Rob Edwards
The Duke of Buccleuch has been accused of breaking Scotland's 'right to roam' law by trying to make people pay to take walks on his 1,000-acre estate near Edinburgh.

The UK's largest private landowner is charging dog walkers £20 for an "annual pass" and demanding £1 from ramblers and cyclists when they visit Dalkeith Country Park. He is also installing CCTV, electric controls on the main gate, and attempting to restrict access at other entrances.

The duke's moves have infuriated residents, ramblers and politicians who argue that local people have been walking in the park for free for decades. Some say the charges are "extortionate" and "totally unreasonable", with some walkers refusing to pay them.

But the Buccleuch estate is "mystified" by "misleading" suggestions that it is trying to restrict access. New security measures were being introduced to prevent anti-social behaviour and the killing of deer but these should not deter walkers, it says.

Dalkeith Country Park is one of Buccleuch's five major country estates, four of them in Scotland and one in England, covering a total of over 240,000 acres. It is the site of Dalkeith Palace, built in 1702 and used by Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.

But Buccleuch's attempts to charge for and control access have now run into fierce opposition. Jim Mitchell, a dog owner from Dalkeith, has been walking several times a week in the park for the last 30 years without being charged.

"Now I'm being stopped and asked to pay extortionate amounts just to walk my dog. I think it's totally unreasonable and it really sickens me," he told the Sunday Herald.

"I don't think we should be charged. Under the land reform legislation, we're perfectly entitled to walk there."

John Ritchie, a dog owner from Newtongrange who regularly uses the park, said: "There are lots of people and locals that refuse to pay. The gullible and the tourists are the ones being fleeced."

Dave Morris, the former director of Ramblers Scotland, accused the duke of taking a "hostile attitude" to public access. He was breaching land reform law by ignoring the free use of Dalkeith park by local people over many years, he argued.

"He needs to abandon his charging plans or face legislative action in the Scottish courts to secure public rights of access. The best way for him to have due regard to his access responsibilities is for him to charge only for car parking."

Ramblers Scotland had received many queries from the public concerned about charging and access at the park, reported policy manager, Helen Todd. "It's disappointing that the estate has a less than welcoming attitude to its neighbours," she said.

According to Colin Beattie, the SNP MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh, the fact that local people had been walking for free in the park for years meant that their access was protected by the 'right to roam' law as long as they were well behaved. "I would be appalled if the landowner felt he had the right to impose charges and to restrict entry," he said.

East Lothian Council, which covers part of Dalkeith park, implied that there was an issue over access. "The council is working with Buccleuch to see if the aspirations of the estate can be met while at the same time asserting free right of access from Old Craighall for walkers, riders and cyclists," said a council spokeswoman.

Midlothian Council, however, suggested that Buccleuch might be complying with land reform legislation because the estate had previously charged for access in the summer months between about 10am and 4pm. Most residents knew they could walk for free outwith those times, the council said.

Dalkeith Country Park's manager, Edward Morris, insisted that access to the park had been encouraged for generations. "There has been a nominal charge for access for several decades and people have always visited the park in great numbers," he said.

"Our plans to alter the structure of our access fee have been well publicised and have been formulated following extensive consultation with local residents, community councils and stakeholders."

The park's redevelopment coincided with a problem of anti-social behaviour at certain times of day. "This has included incidents of deer being attacked and killed and other forms of unacceptable disorder," Morris said.

"As a result, we are having to install a number of new security measures including CCTV. There is no question of these measures deterring walkers or access takers who are welcome and are encouraged to visit our estates."

Buccleuch remained committed to offering the "widest possible access" whilst ensuring the safety and enjoyment of all, he added. "This includes local residents and dog walkers who value the park so highly and have been supportive of our plans."_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis more than 30 years in the making. When the Thatcher government gave council tenants the option to buy their homes via the Right to Buy scheme, it also prohibited councils from reinvesting the funds in more homes. The state was gradually replaced by the private sector as the primary builder of properties. So followed decades of rising demand and falling supply, which has resulted in today’s situation of booming house prices, unaffordable rents and surging levels of homelessness. The current Tory government needs to shift its focus away from propping up house prices and protecting investments to building more affordable housing.

Is demand simply out of hand?

Since the introduction of Right to Buy in 1980, the UK population has grown year on year; it is now 12% larger. That’s 8 million more people in need of homes. But even this significant increase in demand doesn’t tell the full picture. In addition to the growing domestic population, the UK housing market is increasingly flooded with foreign investors – at least 2 million of whom own property in Britain. Recent years have seen a huge influx of capital from overseas being poured into the property market, especially in London. In the capital, three-quarters of all new builds are bought by foreign investors, as are half of all properties worth more than £1 million, with the average asking price in London currently £981,182.

While demand in the housing market is increasing, the makeup of that demand is also changing. First-time buyers are facing stiffer competition from landlords, as the buy-to-let market has increased threefold since 2001. Investors are making money hand over fist, with profits totalling a staggering £112 billion last year, up more than £5 billion on the year before, largely at the expense of private renters and would-be first-time buyers. Between January 2014 and January 2015, the number of first-time mortgages awarded was down 14% year on year, while in the same period buy-to-let mortgages were up by the same percentage.

The Help to Buy scheme was the major housing policy of the last parliament. The scheme essentially sees the state underwrite part of the mortgage debt for first-time buyers, meaning a lower deposit is needed. It has come under particular scrutiny recently, with Capital Economics, a leading independent research company describing it as having had a “fleeting impact” that has served only a “lucky few”. The scheme has driven up demand and thus contributed to spiralling house prices. The income needed to buy a first-time home is now 12% higher than it was when the scheme started, compared to only a 1.5% increase in average earnings.

Or is supply just running dry?

Just as demand for housing has been on the up for decades, inversely supply has completely tailed off. In 1970 more than 350,000 homes were built. Last year that figure was just 141,000. In 2004, Kate Barker’s Review of Housing Supply suggested that 240,000 homes would need to be built a year to ensure enough affordable homes to meet demand. Since then, that target has never been met. The current output is now 42% below that suggested minimum. The Tories’ 2015 manifesto promised 200,000 “starter homes” – reserved for first-time buyers under 40 and sold at 20% below the market price – over the course of the entire parliament. It did not contain a pledge on the total number of homes to be built annually.

While the government is neglecting building social houses, it is still spending vast amounts on subsidising housing - the amount spent on housing benefit is set to reach £25 billion a year by 2017.

So what has happened? Since the introduction of Right to Buy the state has stepped away from housebuilding and left the construction of social housing to not-for-profit housing associations. But housing associations only managed to build 21,600 new homes in 2013 compared to 1.7 million people who are on waiting lists for social housing. Anyone fancy a house share with 78 other applicants and their families? Thought not. Between 2010 and 2015, the amount councils have been given to spend on housing measures was cut by 34%, and further cuts look likely in the course of the next parliament.

But while the government is neglecting building social houses, it is still spending vast amounts on subsidising housing, just perhaps in the wrong areas. The amount spent on housing benefit is set to reach £25 billion a year by 2017. A significant amount of this money is simply lining the pockets of private landlords and helping keep rents inflated. A further £1.4 billion a year is spent on home ownership subsidies such as Help to Buy. It is estimated that the money spent on both these areas between 2010-2014 (£115 billion) would be enough to build some 6.8 million state-backed homes at current rates of subsidy, which would be enough to solve the housing shortage overnight, although rent and house prices – and therefore landlords – would probably take a drastic hit.

As the state has stepped back, the private sector has failed to step up. The drastic fall in the number of state-built homes since the 1970s simply hasn’t been sufficiently offset by the number of privately built homes. Since the recession, the building of private sector homes has been concentrated in fewer hands, with lots of small and medium-sized firms going under. Larger developers are reluctant to increase the numbers of homes they build, as Toby Lloyd of housing charity Shelter deftly puts it: “Housebuilders are profit-making developers, that’s their job. Why would they build more homes to sell them more cheaply?”

Making better use of what we have

It’s patently obvious that more homes need to be built consistently over a number of years to try and alleviate the shortage of decent and affordable homes. But there’s also a strong case to be made for using the properties that already exist but are sitting dormant. According to the Empty Homes Agency, there are more than 600,000 empty residential properties in England, 200,000 of which have been empty for six months or more. Based on statutory homeless figures, that’s nearly enough to provide each homeless person with two properties.

Mark Hemingway, Chair of the Empty Homes Agency, told me: “Properties that lie empty can blight neighbourhoods, represent a waste of our housing stock and mean that we are underutilising brownfield land that could readily provide much-needed homes for people.”

Charities like Habitat for Humanity Homes already do work in this area. They have a scheme that renovates disused properties on behalf of the landlord, before renting them out via housing associations at affordable rents. They have completed dozens of such homes, but what is needed is a more widespread approach that can bring whole derelict streets en masse back into use.

In addition to more traditional derelict properties, there is a growing trend of “buy-to-leave” investors who buy homes – especially new-builds – simply as assets that accrue value and therefore it’s easier to leave them empty. Quantitative statistics on this are notoriously hard to come by, but there is much anecdotal evidence of it. In one new-build tower block off Old Street, London, only one-third of the addresses were registered for both council tax and voting – a clear indicator of occupancy. If the limited supply that is created is being gobbled up by investors instead of being used as homes, this represents a serious problem. It seems high time some law to prevent this, or at least a viable tax to dissuade it, is implemented.

Building a better future

There is much at stake in tackling the crisis caused by Britain’s grossly unbalanced housing market. On the one hand developers, investors and buy-to-let landlords are reaping astronomical profits. Since 1996, property in the UK has performed considerably better than any other asset, with a return on investment as high as 1,400% over that period. At the sharp end of the scale are those forced to stay in temporary accommodation, live in caravans or even sleep rough – all of which have risen dramatically over the last four years. And then there are those in between, potential first-time buyers priced out and families being hit with ever-increasing rents on the private rental market.

The money spent on Help to Buy and other demand-side schemes would be better invested on increasing the supply of housing, especially by building affordable homes for tenants that were ring-fenced from investors – or, crazy idea as it might be – social housing. The current Tory plan to extend the Right to Buy scheme to housing association tenants is nonsensical, as it will only benefit those who don’t need help – tenants who already have both secure and affordable homes. Perhaps the most fundamental shift required is to stop viewing houses are purely investments for the rich; they should be homes for the rest first and foremost.

Image courtesy of Craig Rodway via Flickr, used under CC Licence.
About the writer

Joe Turnbull is a culture critic and political commentator who has written for the likes of the Guardian, Frieze, House Magazine, Apollo Magazine, a-n News, thisistomorrow and Garageland. He is also the Politics Editor for the Inky Needles publishing group, as well as Publications Editor for Art Map London. Since graduating with a first class degree in Politics and Modern History from the University of Manchester, Joe has been working freelance in the realms of publishing and journalism. Joe’s writing often explores the lines of intersect between politics and culture, looking not just at overtly political art, but at the politics of cultural production and reception. He is also interested in geopolitics and counter-culture.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in his Christmas message that Britain's Christian values have been key to making the country a successful home to people of all faiths and none PA
David Cameron has used his New Year message to commit his last four years in Downing Street to beating poverty.

But on the same day new figures revealed that homelessness has doubled in London under his premiership, with the Conservative government’s cutbacks to housing benefit and its poor record on provision of affordable housing cited as key factors behind the worrying rise in people sleeping rough.

More than 7,500 people were left without a home in the capital, compared to 3,673 in 2009/2010 – the year he entered Number 10 – according to figures collected by the Combined Homelessness Information Network.

READ MORE
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In his traditional message to the nation Mr Cameron said tackling poverty will be one of four priorities in 2016 and said his 10 years as Prime Minister will be looked back on as one of the “great reforming decades”.

“We have taken great leaps in recent decades, but stubborn and persistent poverty still exists,” he said in his New Year message.

“So we need a more targeted strategy for those most in need of help, focusing on tackling the root causes like worklessness and family instability.

“And as we develop our Life Chances Strategy this spring, I want us to move further on addiction and mental health, especially in prison, and to rescue more children from being stuck in failing care systems.

“That’s why, in the next five years, our reforms to social services will be as radical as the reforms to our schools.”

However, the homelessness charity St Mungo’s said it was Mr Cameron’s policies in Government that had triggered the more than 100 per cent rise in people sleeping rough.

Cuts to local authority funding meant councils were unable to offer homes to some people in the most need, while housing benefit cuts and a lack of affordable housing had also contributed to the increase.

It also said EU migrants were being forced to sleep on the streets due to mistreatment by employers.

Howard Sinclair, chief executive of St Mungo’s, said: “Worryingly, the number of people who’ve previously slept rough and are returning to the streets is rising.

“We need to ask what more can be done for these people, what gaps need to be filled to prevent repeat homelessness.”

3 hours ago
Peter Duff
I'm sure all of those that your policies have caused such hardship will welcome the news. Although I expect procrastination as usual from you.
ReplyShare+2

4 hours ago
Tom Sharp
Cameron vows to crack down on homelessness 'as sure as I support West Ham football club. Or is it that other team'?

ReplyShare+3

4 hours ago
Tom Sharp
Presumably if you do not have an address. You don't get a vote!
ReplyShare+2

5 hours ago
oldwease
Take a stroll around Marble Arch & Hyde Park at night and you'll see the Roma encampments. You can then take in the enrichment along the Edgware Road.

Oh, best not to carry any valuables.
ReplyShare0

5 hours ago
Andrew Filson
I presume by "crackdown" he means fines for being homeless and more laws to put them further into poverty. Perhaps even building new privately owned jails to house them for profit and unpaid slavery for the unemployed.
ReplyShare+2

5 hours ago
JJAMMontoast
Cameron is fast becoming a man whose words mean nothing. If he talks about poverty expect it to get worse. The same things happened under Thatcher and homelessness rose. The homeless are not a priority for councils or government.
ReplyShare1 reply+3_________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

As housing charity Shelter turns 50, the country is still plagued by overcrowding, rogue landlords, insecure tenancies and homelessness. How do we even begin to make things better?
Paul Mason Monday 8 February 2016 17.12 GMT Last modified on Monday 8 February 2016 22.00 GMT

Its official name was Navigation Street, and a glance at a 19th century map suggests its origin: an isolated row of terraced houses leading down to the canal that runs through the middle of my hometown.

Canals were originally called “navigations” and the people who dug them “navvies”. This term – still in use in the 1960s – was code for poor, itinerant, Irish manual workers. So we called it “Navvy Street”: it was where the poorest people in the town lived and probably served that function from when it was built to when it was knocked down and turned into a “close”.

Navigation Street was the place I thought of when the housing charity Shelter reissued documentary photographs from the 1960s to mark its 50th anniversary. If you flick through Nick Hedges’ photos now, you could be forgiven for thinking they depict some kind of uniform, northern industrial bleakness at of the time. But you’d be wrong.

Shelter and the slums: capturing bleak Britain 50 years ago
Read more
The overcrowding, dirt and abject poverty in those images shocked people because they were exceptional. Two decades of post-war social housebuilding, plus a pro-active welfare state, had done a lot to suppress poverty. Places like Navigation Street were rare by the late sixties.

Shelter was born because people realised dwindling number of classic slum streets were not the only problem: there was widespread hidden homelessness expressed through overcrowding. The private rented sector was utterly insecure and housing costs were devouring the incomes of the poor.

Skip forward 50 years and we too have rising homelessness – 54,000 families in England last year, up 36% since the financial crisis began. Housing charities record rising overcrowding, precarious tenancies, predatory landlords and unaffordable rents. The difference is it’s not only the poor who suffer.

The shared student house has been reincarnated as the shared young professional’s house, with some even forced to share rooms. According to Crisis, there are 3.5m households containing a “concealed” adult or couple in England.

Meanwhile apartments too small to live in are being built across southern England: their occupants will have jobs once considered middle class. Precarious tenancies, outlawed during the housing reform movement of the 1960s, have created a “complain and you’re out” culture.

If you wanted to photograph the modern housing problem you’d go to the coffee shops where young people perch over laptops, late into the night, rather than endure their overcrowded flat. You would photograph the sofa-surfers; the migrants forced to live in converted garages; the families packing their bags as rent hikes and benefit cuts in the private rented sector force them to move to the periphery of towns and cities, or throw themselves at the local council for help.

The root of this problem is not one of policy – though the row over social housing and housing supply will probably shape this parliament – the deeper problem is the financialisation of home ownership.

At one point, rising home ownership solved many of the problems identified the 1960s. The predictably steady rise in house prices over time, like predictable inflation, created an escalator for the working class. If you combined that with vigorous social housebuilding, as practised by both Labour and Conservative councils in the 1970s, you created affordability at both ends of the scale.

If you then dramatically slash the supply of social housing, through right-to-buy and reduced council building, you create a permanent imbalance that turns home ownership into a form of asset investment.

‘Pay to stay’ trap will force working families out of council homes
Read more
What you get then is boom and bust. And the only way to cure the bust is for the government to greet every collapse in market prices with effective state subsidies for home ownership. This, in turn, induces a speculative frenzy of one way bets – on development, on buy to let, on off-plan investment buying from abroad.

To economists who study financial frenzy, the British housing market has followed the classic curve: the certainty of rising prices and short supply draws more and more people into the market, knowing a crash cannot wipe them out – because when confronted with falling house prices, governments have used taxpayers’ money and micromanagement of the banks to halt a spiral of repossessions and falling prices.

We don’t know what Britain would look like if the same levels of explicit subsidy and implicit preference had been pumped into the social rented sector. All we know is that the current situation is not tenable.

But we can ask ourselves the following questions:

First: how much space are people entitled to live in? The market sets no limits; even such formal rules as they still exist (they are being weakened) are flouted by the young salariat.

Second: what is the optimal balance between the private, social and state-owned rented housing and the owner-occupied sector? This cannot be hard to fathom since many cities in the 1980s and early 1990s achieved housing markets that “cleared” in economic terms: in Leicester in the 1980s I had no problem finding a secure private tenancy; no problem getting the council to hound my landlord to maintain it properly; very little problem moving from there to a housing association flat; very little problem transferring, as a key worker, from there to a council flat in London. Yes, London.

Third, what do we mean by “affordable”– when it comes to either rents or prices on state-specified newbuild homes? Under both Labour, Coalition and the Conservatives the concept of affordability has become delinked from incomes and attached to a percentage of the market rate. The same state that decided nobody should be repossessed during the 2008-11 housing slump could decide that nobody has to pay more than a fixed percentage of their incomes on housing costs.

Maybe we need to start with principles: that everyone has a right to a home; that every person has a right to a minimum amount of space in that home; and that those who claim the right to own houses nobody lives in should pay a hefty, disincentivising penalty.

Yes, that’s an infringement of the market – but housing in Britain has never been a free market: it is being created and re-created through regulation and deregulation – on benefits, on affordability, on building standards, on right to buy. The point is to shape the market towards smart outcomes.

The Tories Housing and Planning Bill is an attack on us all and is a betrayal of the British people.
This Bill was passed under the radar during xmas/new year break.
Under this Bill, anyone living in a council or housing association flat will be force to "pay to stay" if the household income is ore than £40,000 a year the rent will be charged at the market rent not the rent set by the council or housing association.
All new tenancies will be reassessed every 2-5 years to determine if you still need your council flat.!!!
Please join in with the growing resistance to this fascist Bill. Do nt give up hope.

Public social media information apparently isn’t enough for the next generation of businesses looking to grade consumers on their reliability. A new app wants to know as much as it can about you­including the private digital bits.

Tenant Assured, created by Score Assured, a U.K.-based startup, aims to dig deeper than what’s out in the open. Here’s how the service, which debuted in the U.K. recently, works.

A prospective landlord (and Tenant Assured customer) sends a prospective renter a link to the service, which requests access to one or more of his or her social media profiles on Facebook FB -1.64% , Instagram, LinkedIn LNKD -3.98% , and Twitter TWTR -3.97% . Then it hoovers up the data therein contained­including what’s normally off limits for profiles marked “private”­crunches it through some algorithms, and delivers an analysis to the landlord.

A reporter at the Washington Post took the plunge (brave soul) and decided to test out the service. The app created a “creepy” digest, as she says, about her online self. “My personal tenant report includes a list of my closest friends and interests, a percentage breakdown of my personality traits, a list of every time I’ve tweeted the words ‘loan’ and ‘pregnant,’ and the algorithm’s confidence that I’ll pay my rent consistently,” she wrote.

Thornhill assured Fortune that the company does not pry into one’s chat threads, such as Facebook Messenger conversations, Twitter or Instagram direct messages, or LinkedIn “in mails.” Rather, it scopes out the content posted to a network, looks at one’s usage and activity, one’s closest contacts, and other personal details­such as how often someone goes on vacations or writes the words “terrorist” and “murder.”

“People continue more and more to expect their private data to become something of value that they­can’t sell­but can trade for something,” Thornhill said. “We see it as a way of helping people get something they want.” In this case, tenancy.

Credit reporting agencies and background checkers have long histories of associated connotations with privacy invasion, intrusiveness, and, of course, creepiness. As The Atlantic out it in a recent story, such bureaus “were the NSA of the 19th century.” This seems to be an iteration on that theme.

The company is also exploring specialized versions of the software for use-cases in recruitment, online dating, and other areas.

The richest landowners in England are being asked to help alleviate the national housing crisis by making land available for building new homes.

According to a recent recommendation from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), those who own 5,000 of England’s largest country estate are in a position to create economic growth, employment, and housing in areas of the country where the population is declining. RICS is lobbying the government to launch more schemes to support building new homes on unused land.

At present there is a shortfall of 76% in rural housing, which is compelling people to leave country communities and driving up house prices to such an extent that homes are unaffordable.

The call went out as recent figures revealed that in December, house prices in the UK grew at their most rapid rate in eight months. This happened amid warnings that a deficit of new homes could drive price growth even higher.

Data compiled by Nationwide revealed that prices went up by an average of 0.8% in December, in increase from the 0.1% growth experienced in November.

Sir Peter Erskine, who has constructed 22 affordable properties on his family estate in the East of Fife, Scotland, commented that large estates represent a solution to dwindling population levels in rural communities.

The area near the Cambo estate lost a post office and grocery shop in recent times, and the local school is facing a dearth of pupils.

Sir Peter said that he cared about the well-being of the community, and as major stakeholders, landowners can do a lot of good.

150 staff are employed at the Cambo estate during the peak season, but he warned that if affordable housing is not available, the area’s slow decline can’t be halted.

Jeremy Blackburn, RICs’ head of policy, said that small quantities of affordable housing can make rural communities more viable. He added that the rural housing crisis could be solved if only 10 homes were built in each of the 1,600 small towns in rural England.

He pointed out that the issue was not so much about central government providing fiscal incentives to landowners to encourage building new homes, although it would be helpful. It was about encouraging landed estates and local authorities to work together to build homes, establishing affordable options for both young and old homeowners, especially tenanted farmers who will need somewhere to retire.

Sir Peter said that the TV programme Downton Abbey’s Christmas special showed that country estates were once the centre of social and economic activities in rural areas. He claimed that landowners across the country are willing to assist in bringing about positive social change, but high taxes and hostile political attitudes held them back.

Over the years, he said, there has been a hostile political atmosphere and a punitive tax system was in place until recently.

According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment are themselves landlords who derive an income from a property.

Communities minister Marcus Jones said the Government believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it.

“Of course we believe that all homes should be of a decent standard and all tenants should have a safe place to live regardless of tenure, but local authorities already have strong and effective powers to deal with poor quality and safe accommodation and we expect them to use them,” he said in a reply.

Teresa Pearce, the shadow housing minister who proposed the amendment, said renters lacked “basic consumer protection” when things went wrong.

“The majority of landlords let property which is and remains in a decent standard. Many landlords go out of their way to ensure that even the slightest safety hazard is sorted quickly and efficiently,” she said.

“So it is even more distressing when we see reports of homes which are frankly unfit for human habitation being let, often at obscene prices.

“Where else in modern day life could someone get away with this? It’s a consumer issue. If I purchased a mobile phone or a computer that didn’t work, didn’t do what it said it would or was unsafe I would take it back and get a refund.”

But the Government claimed the new law would result in “unnecessary regulation”.

The proposed amendment reflects the contents of a private members bill blocked by Conservative MPs in October last year.

That bill, proposed by Labour MP Karen Buck, was “talked out” by backbenchers, including Conservative MP Philip Davies, who is himself a landlord.

During that debate he warned that landlords “appear to be an easy target for the Left in this country”.

The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill would have updated a law introduced in the 19th century that requires homes under a certain rent limit to be “fit for human habitation”.

That rent limit has not been updated since 1957, however, and the rule currently applies to all properties with an annual rent of below £80 in London and £52 elsewhere.

The weekly average weekly rent in London is currently £362 and practically zero properties currently fall under the legislation.

The Government’s housing bill includes provisions for starter homes, the right to buy for housing association tenants, higher rents for higher income social tenants, and some changes to speed up the planning system.

According to Parliament’s register of interests, the 72 MPs who are registered as deriving income from property of over £10,000 a year and who voted against the law are:

03 Aug 2018 Max Baring Documentary Film Maker
Fighting climate change is much more than a day job for Chris Vernon and Erica Thompson. It is their entire way of life.

They are part of a groundbreaking Welsh government scheme under which people get to circumvent tight planning rules so long as they build an eco-home in the countryside and go back to working the land on which it sits.

The 'One Planet Development Policy' was adopted by the Welsh government in 2011 and so far, 32 households have signed up.

The aim is ambitious: in a small country where people on average use three times their fair share of the world's resources, Wales wants its One Planet people to use only the resources they are due. Which means a simpler smallholding life, spending and travelling less, growing and making more.

A spokesman for the Welsh government said the scheme was an important niche initiative, rather than a model to scale up.

"It is intended to provide an opportunity for those wishing to live a highly sustainable lifestyle, project a light touch on the environment, and who will be largely self-sufficient in terms of income, food and energy," said Matthew Morris, a communications officer with the Welsh government.

"Numbers of such developments are likely to remain small."

The scheme has mostly attracted digital-era smallholders with a stubborn determination to return to a subsistence lifestyle in the rolling hills and valleys of rural Wales. And not to ruin the planet with a consumerist, throwaway lifestyle.

"We've known for 20 or 30 years now what we need to do to address the problem of climate change," Vernon said from his half-built home.

"We don't need more data. Whilst I was sitting in my office working on the computer I got the feeling I could be doing something that demonstrates how we can address the problems."

Vernon and his partner Thompson know more about "the problems" than most. She holds a PhD in climate science, he has one in glaciology and is a climate modeller at Britain's national weather service, the Met office.

They decided it was time for action, not academia.

Eight months pregnant and elbow-deep in local clay plaster, Thompson said their home had to be zero carbon in construction and use to win government go-ahead.

It sits deep in bucolic Pembrokeshire, a lush, coastal county in the southwest of Wales that pioneered the green approach before it was adopted countrywide.

Just up the road lies the Lammas community, a pioneering and collective eco-venture where nine smallholdings nestle in the landscape around a central community hub.

Image: Lammas
Heatwave

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international group that assesses climate change, estimates that global temperatures could rise 3.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Amid a European heatwave running from North Africa up to the Arctic Circle, the Welsh initiative is taking root on the Western fringe of the continent in a bid to redress some of the damage.

The policy also aims to address a myriad of problems beyond rising temperatures, from soil degradation to rural de-population, a housing crisis to wasteful global supply chains.

It offers people with little money, but plenty of determination, a way out of the rat race and back to the land.

With property prices out of reach for many rural workers and tight regulations restricting new builds, the scheme is the only way for many locals to own a home and work nearby, said another One Planet home builder, Cathryn Wyatt.

Dairy farmer Brian Boman sums up the difficulties faced by locals seeking to live and work in the area.

"We have two sons both in their 30s, both involved in the business. We have more than enough room here, to build something on the farm for the pair of them, but of course planning is a huge issue," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Housing figures across Wales tell the same story.

In the 1980s, it would have taken a typical 20-something household about three years to save for an average deposit, according to the Resolution Trust think tank.

The research shows it would now take 19 years.

Like many of her fellow One Planet builders, Jacqui Banks wanted to jettison her old life and be true to her principles.

"It's a lot of work, in the early years, but what we're building is hopefully a resilient system that is going to help us have a positive impact on the world," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Living in the city I found it extremely difficult - the consumerist lifestyle and the waste involved."

Erica Thompson applies locally sourced plaster to the straw bale insulation in her new home in Pembrokeshire, Wales, Britain on 21 June 2018. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Max Baring

The Good Life

To get permission to build a One Planet Development, three requirements must first be satisfied.

First is the overall ecological footprint.

As Vernon explained, each household must only use their global fair share of land: "If you take the entire global resource … you divide it by the population of the planet, you get a number: 1.88 hectares, it's a fairly arbitrary number, but that's the number that is your fair share."

Each applicant must also show that within five years, 65 percent of their basic needs are covered by their patch of land, including food, water, energy and waste.

Hence the hodge podge of greenhouses and polytunnels that dot the land, often cobbled together from reclaimed materials and designed to make the most of a grass incline, woodland shelter or power-generating stream.

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Applicants must also come up with a zero-carbon house design using locally-sourced and sustainable materials.

The result: a magical landscape dotted with "hobbit houses" straight out of JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", with mesmerising wooden beams, grass roofs and hemp walls.

Thirdly, everyone must set up a rural business to pay the sort of bills - internet, clothes, council tax – that cannot be met with a subsistence-only lifestyle.

Enterprises range from fruit wine to bees, an exotic tree nursery to sculpture - anything that brings in a small income.

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Written by

Max Baring, Documentary Film Maker

This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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